This invention relates generally to the streaming of a conference session, and in particular, to a method and apparatus for automatically data streaming a multiparty conference session.
Participants of meetings in a single company, as well as meetings between multiple companies, are typically located at geographically remote locations. Often, expenses associated with the participants' travel to a single site for the meetings prohibit such travel. Teleconferencing provides a convenient, low-cost solution by allowing individuals from various geographic locations to have a meeting over the telephone. Teleconferencing also can be used where the number of participants in a meeting exceeds the available physical meeting space.
Conventional conferencing systems and methods are limited in the number of people that can participate in a conference call. One type of limitation includes expense limitations. Typically, the moderator of a conference call has to pay for each connection. For a conference call with a large number of participants, the cost can become prohibitive.
Another type of limitation is a hardware limitation. Conferencing equipment, such as conference bridges, have a limited number of connections that can be handled. Since each participant in the conference call connects to the conference bridge, a connection line on the conference bridge is needed for each participant.
A proposed solution is to record the conference call and make it available for playback by people who did not listen to the original call. However, the process of recording a call and making the recorded data available for later playback involves manually linking equipment and manually initiating the recording process. Such steps are burdensome and time intensive.
As can be appreciated, conventional conferencing systems are limited in their ability to live broadcast a telephone conference and to record a telephone conference. What is needed therefore is a system for recording and automatically data streaming a telephone conference to participants.